“News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising.”
— Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe
Francisco Pizarro rode well ahead of the pack earning the title “Evil European Oppressor.” In the bad old days of Eurocentric 20th century style history, textbooks had already drawn a bead on him. The man who took down the Incan empire and assassinated Atahualpa was a devout Papist. That detail failed to save his reputation anywhere–including the Catholic curriculum. Balboa’s betrayer never got an ounce of whitewash even in an academic era when original white visitors to the Western hemisphere were slathered in it. But there was always something fishy about the story we got in grade school. How could an illiterate 16th century Spaniard, with crude artillery and ancient ordnance, defeat an empire of 10 million with less than 200 men? Some students, who were steeped in the lore of WWII, tended to be skeptical.
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Teachers used all their guile deflecting questions—“I don’t know” was a response kids were commonly ridiculed for. The real answer is a dicey one for evangelists of the Europhobic religion. The old school explanation for conquistador success doesn’t leave indigenous inhabitants looking too capable or valiant. The truth, on the other hand, doesn’t jibe at all with sacred tenets of the victimist catechism. Pizarro was facing impending doom in the pivotal battle. What saved him from certain destruction wasn’t his treachery, Christianity, tactics or fire power—it was the local talent. It seems there was a plenty of dissatisfaction with Incan management. Similar circumstances worked for colonial conquerors all over the globe.
Oppression, if you can believe it, was not invented by the Eurotrash. People were getting beat up, dehumanized, tortured, enslaved, vivisected, macro and micro aggressed long before any Christians crossed the pond with ballistic weaponry. Power could be, and invariably was, abused by the P.O.C. who possessed it, without any pointers from their paler oppressors.
The interaction between Western European navigational powerhouses, Spain, England, France, Holland and Portugal, and non-Europeans post-Columbus is rarely the simple tale trendy academics are telling. Nothing can excuse the exploits of cutthroats like Pizzaro. But tyranny was far from uncommon in Africa, Asia or the Americas before the Age of Exploration. What could the natives in a foreign land expect from a Ming emperor in command of 1000 galleons from Dutch shipyards? This was a dynasty that gifted the world death by a thousand cuts—a process that took days. But a comprehensive accounting of the human condition outside Christendom over the centuries—an honest one anyway—is less than welcome in enlightened circles these days.
When institutional power is exerted to blot out the gory details of human atrocity through the ages—it is awfully dimwitted to believe that any other kind of literal description isn’t also fair game. The truth of that assertion is falling on authors and auteurs daily—if not hourly.
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The October 18 issue of the NYT magazine features “Freedom Of Speech Will Preserve Our Democracy” by Emily Bazelon. The title is a bit of a curve ball. What the writer’s argument actually is is no easy matter to decipher. She warns repeatedly of people who are deceived by what they’d like to believe—and rules herself out of that lot categorically. She swings fast and loose with broad definitions and abstractions without finding any compulsion to qualify them.
We are told that “antifa” is “a loose term for left-wing activists.” This shores up—without saying explicitly—the bizarre notion that people who arrive en masse at hundreds of protest sites and proceed to act in concert fail to meet the bar of an “organization.” It also dodges the fact that most of us only heard of the term “antifa” from members themselves who have blasted it at us for the last 5 years.
The article opens with alarm over supposedly false alarms being raised by purveyors of “disinformation.” Michael Anton, who warned of “The Coming Coup”, comes up first. “Democrats were’ laying the groundwork for revolution right in front of our eyes,” Anton wrote without evidence in The American Mind.” We are told this with no mention of the six different links to various comments and published statements evincing Anton’s case.
Dan Bongino, whose videos covering Anton’s thesis got six-million views, is next. One of them is titled “They are telling you what they are going to do!” The almost limitless supply of video and print rhetoric from radical voices delivering the threats Bongino describes get no coverage in the article either.
It’s not at all clear how what Anton and Bongino say qualifies as “disinformation”? Worse hyperbole appears in NYT op-eds daily—and Anton includes the quotes and links that evince his concerns. Bazelon doesn’t think they count.
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There’s little challenge putting Anton and Bongino into context. Violent demands made by NFAC and other hostile activists weren’t faked nor were they disputed by establishment sources, then there was the 525% crime spike in Seattle’s CHOP zone and widespread mayhem indulged in scores of urban areas at the time. Diners, who were completely anonymous, were threatened and disrupted mid-meal—few “coups” in history resorted to that extreme. All over the country hooligans spoke directly into the mic about what they’d do if government didn’t cave to them. When supposedly reputable scholars like CNN star Reza Aslan warn: “If they even TRY to replace RBG we burn the entire “f—ing thing down,” should we ignore it? The newspaper of record did. Little listed above was found fit to print.
Multitudes have been stocking ordnance and loading for bear recently–it isn’t because they have been deceived—it’s because they saw what actually happened this summer. Media can try to bend reality with myopic coverage—their whines only work on the faithful as they lose credibility.
We hear, via The Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard:
“[T]hat effective disinformation campaigns are often an ‘elite driven, mass-media led process’ in which ‘social media played only a secondary and supportive role.’ Trump’s election put him in the position to operate directly through Fox News and other conservative media outlets, like Rush Limbaugh’s talk-radio show, which have come to function ‘in effect as a party press,’ the Harvard researchers found.”
While there may be some truth in this, a few specific examples would have been helpful. The ones she alludes to leading in fall short of an “elite driven” “process” by any common usage of the expression. Most of Bazelon’s fans consider her publishers to be not only “elite”, but among the elitist of sources. That’s why they read them. Less pliant readers remain wary of vague assertions whose verity is only backed up by the words “Harvard researchers.”
“Along with disinformation campaigns, there is the separate problem of ‘troll armies’ –a flood of commenters, often propelled by bots –that ‘aim to discredit or to destroy the reputation of disfavored speakers and to discourage them from speaking again,’ Jack Goldsmith, a conservative law professor at Harvard, writes in an essay in ‘The Perilous Public Square,’ a book edited by David E. Pozen that was published this year.”
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Bazelon is onto something here but it is coming at us from a platform out of the twilight zone. Where are they being “discouraged”? In July Bari Weiss’ resignation letter from the NYT—a former writer for the paper never mentioned in the article– made worldwide news. The most quoted copy in it went “Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor.” That punch line was overdue. What does Emily think a “troll army” is? Is there a media entity out there that is more sensitive to the whims of militant minorities of readership–gunning for dissenting heads–than the NYT? If so, Bazelon could have done readers the courtesy of cluing us in.
Goldsmith is a dangerous man to cite—especially in this context. Earlier this year the professor co-authored a piece with Andrew Keane Woods for The Atlantic titled: “Internet Speech Will Never Go Back to Normal.” It is nothing less than a call for Chinese style enforcement of internet censorship and social conformity right here in the US. The only thing that could make a source more toxic than that would be membership in a Nazi style Party. The lady just keeps pouring it on thicker:
“Other democracies,” we find, “…have created better conditions for their citizenry to sort what’s true from what’s not and to make informed decisions about what they want their societies to be. Here in the United States, meanwhile, we’re drowning in lies.”
This assertion is foisted on us without one word of evidence, citation or example. Would that omission go unnoted in a college essay? Many high-school teachers wouldn’t accept such ukases. The NYT has submitted to the “everybody knows” standard. “Everybody knows Americans are dumb—they don’t even trust the media.”
Inevitably, Hannah Arendt is cited. This was a lady who took up with Martin Heidegger—in the most intimate ways—before and after the war. Heidegger, supposedly, was the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. That he paid his dues to the Nazi Party–up until the very last moment of its existence–should have some impact on the reputation of a Jew who made her mark writing about the very Holocaust she escaped. That it doesn’t bears testament to the authoritarian inclinations of the posing academic elite. Statism—even coming from the ethnic nationalist side of the political compass 180 degrees away—will not be disavowed. Professor Heidegger was obsessed with understanding the notion of what it means to “be”– it entailed a boot in the arse for anyone reluctant to participate in a mandatory agenda coming down from megalomaniacs in charge. Sound familiar? Here’s a quote citing Heidegger worthy of everyone’s attention, it’s from Thomas Sheehan in The New York Review of Books:
“’Let not theories and ‘ideas’ be the rules of your being. The Führer himself and he alone is German reality and its law, today and for the future,” and who wrote to a colleague: “The individual, wherever he stands, counts for nothing. The fate of our people in their State is everything.’” (Original emphasis)
How does the author of such lines retain any credence or respectability in the 20th or 21st centuries? This philosopher’s academic standing is a posthumous wound to every man left lifeless on a Norman beach in June 1944. The motive for letting this unapologetic fascist off the hook is no mystery—the people will be ruled.
Many institutions of the establishment have worked their way into an awkward position—assaulting established authority of any kind excepting their own. Is that the least reminiscent of any 20th century European political parties from east of the Rhine?
People like Bazelon, Tim Wu and Anne Applebaum always swear allegiance to the 1st amendment while despairing bombastically about what a threat it has become—freedom, taken far enough—cuts into the readership of people like them. Between the lines we are advised not to let “free” speech stand in the way of the indispensable speech their camp posseses.
Meanwhile, in the space of 3 days Shelby Steele’s video “What Killed Michael Brown?” was blocked by Amazon, The Babylon Bee was demonetized at Facebook and Brett Weinstein was kicked off the same site. None of this surfaced on NYT platforms. Dissident views are booted from comment sections on sites like Slate, Salon and others as martinets in charge vaguely allude to “rules of the road” and “community standards” that don’t come close to applying. Citing accurate stats with sources can get a comment canceled. Accuracy is irrelevant whenever a sacred demographic’s reputation might be impugned.
Bazelon feels compelled to let readers know that The Daily Caller is a “right-wing outlet.” While Media Matters for America, is “a nonprofit media watchdog group.” Looking over any of their pages going back to 2004 leaves no doubt who is being watched. They go to some lengths obscuring donors that include George Soros. And “Twitter,” we are informed without a hint of sarcasm, “does fact-checking internally.” This actually makes English sense using Webster’s second definition of the verb “check”:
2a: to slow or bring to a stop : BRAKEhastily checked the impulse
b: to block the progress of (someone, such as a hockey player)
The latest head to roll is Glenn Greenwald’s, who parted ways with The Intercept as they elected to censor his coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop development. There is presently no boundary of truth suppression media leviathans are not willing to cross. The pretense of “hate speech” and disinformation now serve as all purpose rhetoricides—no matter how wide of the mark those criteria actually are. The dreaded “bots” are exactly what social media uses stonewalling inquiry with arbitrary, un-appealable rulings.
It is becoming almost impossible to make headway correcting what media gets unequivocally wrong. Nearly any outrageous canard purporting bigotry, racism or intolerance gets passed along. Some reports are true enough but when vetting them equals fascism—who knows about anything? Even when mixed up stories get reexamined the facts generally come out too late to rectify the perception of those choosing to lap it up. This American Conservative article alone contains three salient examples. The few media outfits with the resources to keep up with what hits the wires daily aren’t double checking—they tend to be the false sources.
Prohibitions on “hate speech” are dangerous even when the shoe seems to fit. Is careful examination of historical figures “hate speech”? Andrew Jackson’s standing in the American pantheon has been tumbling towards the historical septic field for years now. Some people object but facts are facts. How does this righteous revisionism stack up against unduly admired from other cultures? So far as we’ve heard from the media nobody has been so much as shoved—much less beheaded–by any of the seventh president’s diehard fans. Morally distinguishing Jackson’s sins from the recorded exploits of Mohamed is a tall order for any advocate. The further adventures of Mohamed and his disciples certainly outpace Jackson by far. Can we really make cultural allowances for massacre, slavery and worse? It is presently illegal in Europe to publicize what is written about the Prophet in Islam’s holiest books.
What can anyone expect to gain studying history if the pretense of strong emotions about a subject precludes its placement in proper perspective?
It was the Nazis who insisted that oppression, inhumanity and abuse of power were failings that are heavily weighted by genetic components. Despots domineering from the upper tiers of media and academia today propound the same thing—the rhetorical ordnance has simply been turned on a new, improved demographical bête-noire. Pointing out this development—or even questioning the coarse, sloppy historical rendering entailed in it—now passes for “hate speech.”
Can the default culprit for all societal ills really be deduced by a citizen’s ancestry? If that’s where we stand why bother writing about it? It’s the kind of ultra-tolerant position that is reached by people who solve things with bludgeons and bayonets.
